Hope

Well, they certainly did not ask my permission. It’s all just as well, because if they had I most certainly would not have given it. But really! It is just barely the middle of August, there is still a lot of Iowa summer left, and those silly birds have already pulled up stakes, loaded their wagons and headed off to that mysterious place where Robins go when they leave my town and my trees.

Not that they usually ask for my permission for anything they do in ‘my town’ and in ‘my trees.’ The males arrive in late winter and set up shop. One of the first things they do is decide who gets the choice tree outside my bedroom window; decide who gets to sing me his morning song; decide who gets to wake me each morning and set up my summer schedule. I mean, pretty presumptive of them!

And so, he sits there and does his chittering song at the first hint of dawn, faithfully, every morning, rain or shine; and totally irrespective of any mood I may be in. I mean; what does he know about my desire to sleep another hour on some given morning. And then, after singing his silly song, (faithfully, every morning, rain or shine,) one morning, in the middle of August, with a lot of summer still left, he just quits, cold turkey, becomes a snow bird, rounds up his family, and is gone. One morning, in the middle of August, the window is open, the fan is off, the birch tree is still there, the sparrows chitter, they chitter all the time, it means nothing; the mourning dove still sits on top of the light pole across the street and coos to his bride, he coos at any hour of the day; but My Robin’s song is gone. I wake up thinking I must have slept through his alarm but after three mornings in a row I know the truth, the voice of my assigned robin is no more.

I keep wondering, is this how life works? We arrive without requesting, or receiving permission either, we set off on the stage of life and say our piece, we play the assigned parts: And then some morning, with us thinking there’s still a lot of summer left, we find the curtain has dropped, our voice has been stilled, and we go off to our “long home, and the mourners go about the streets.”

The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved. Jeremiah 8:20

Before the dawn I slip the bonds of my bed and merge into the darkness outside my front door. Southwest of us there is the constant strobe from lightening – a fitting sequel to yesterday’s un-normally pleasant fall day. Before the dawn – lights come on – briefly. A working mother hurries her two across the street. She pushes them; she pushes the fob in her hand; car lights blink twice. Half a block away a porch light also comes on; a woman kisses a man in a doorway; the door closes and the light goes back out. The lightning keeps flashing.

The early mornings in my small town have sounds. Three miles west of me a train signals as it approaches a crossing; down on Interstate Eighty, whining turbochargers kick in and ram air into the gluttonous throats of big diesel engines; a Killdeer makes its strident calls as it flies off somewhere down my street; in a field southeast of here an enormous reaping machine, behind some piercing lights, goes after several more early morning acres before the lightening yields to the rain.

The dawn is closer now; so also the lightening; so also the rain. The associated thunders now mix with the other sounds around me. The train now comes to my crossing, announces its presence, and rumbles past. The breeze picks up and the first drops fall; I move my contemplations inside my dwelling. I move to safety – I move, anticipating the normal. The thunder now rumbles beyond me also and soon the sun comes out. I sit in fellowship at my breakfast table and raise my orange juice glass. L’chei-im – I toast for life.

It is an abnormal day in my small town. Somewhere close to me someone will not rise with the dawning. Somewhere, the struggle continues for a few more breaths, a few more moments with loved ones, just a few more acres in the field of life. And then the gentle breeze brings on the rain. Somewhere the “grinders cease” but the rain will not. Two men will be together in a field, one will be taken and the other left. It is what normally takes place some of those early mornings in my small town.

There is just something about kneeling on the ground, smelling the fresh earth, and trying to nourish growing things.

Or maybe it’s the green plastic water bucket with KB carefully stenciled on the side. That, and the new garden tools bought with a birthday gift card from my children.

Or than maybe it is about being stuck in the generation between someone’s past and some other people’s future.

Maybe it all came down to some old woman living in a nursing home; spitting five plum pits into a napkin and thinking, “With the right care those pits could become an orchard.”

Somehow, almost in another lifetime; I found myself (almost resentfully,) responsible for the care and nourishment; the future, of five plum pits; and – even being held to a degree of accountability for them. And she, who couldn’t remember whether the pits came from raw or cooked plums; couldn’t remember what I had just told her about how I was caring for them; somehow remembered that she had given something to me that was important to her and kept asking me, over and over again, month after month, visit after visit, whether I had planted them yet.

And so it came to pass that almost exactly a year ago I took five plum pits out of the freezer and lovingly placed them in the ground beside my red raspberry bushes and carefully watched over them for an entire summer with urgent fervency. The fervency was heightened soon after the planting when we also planted that dear person’s body on a hill overlooking a field of growing things. We planted her there awaiting a resurrection day. I watched for life for an entire summer and sadly saw nothing.

This morning!

This morning, with my mother’s green plastic bucket and my children’s birthday-present garden tools, kneeling on the grass, pulling weeds from my raspberry bushes, and caring for growing things; this morning, almost pulling it out for one of the weeds, I spied one slender red/purple stalk with perhaps ten delicate leaves; something that was not there last summer and was most assuredly not one of the weeds with which I was familiar.

I am not sure what a plum tree seedling is supposed to look like but if you were here I would gladly take you back next to the alley. I would be glad to let you vote whether you thought the carefully protected thin little stem and its little green leaves was actually a young plum tree. Together, we might voice opinions about whether it might someday become something. What is not up for vote is the effect that young plant had on me. What is not up for debate is “Whispering hope, like the voice of an angel. This morning, kneeling in the grass amidst growing things, that little sprig of life was “making my heart in its sorrow rejoice.”